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YOT Green Adventure 2012 - Chelsea Clements

YOT Green Adventure 2012 - Chelsea Clements

Chelsea (second girl from the left) with the other ambassadors in Tibet.

Photos: YOT

20 secondary and four university students have gone on an expedition to Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain located in Mahalangur Himalayas with a peak at 8,848 metres above sea level. The trip which began on July 28 for 17 days is sponsored by local charity Yan Oi Tong.

Four secondary students who went on the trip will be sharing their experiences while on the road.

During the first few days in Tibet, the biggest obstacle we faced was high mountain acute disease. Some common symptoms include dizziness, fatigue and unable to sleep. Your heart beats faster than in places where the altitude is around 0, like HK. My heart beat changed from 85 in HK to 112 in Lhasa. And my oxygen rate in blood decreased from 99 to around 92. There is no way to predict who would experience high mountain acute disease, no matter you are an athlete or a person who does minimal exercise, you still have a chance, you never know.

We arrived in Lhasa exhilarated and I was very lucky to have experienced just a little dizziness. But four of our ambassadors were so sick that they couldn’t leave their bed and had to sit in all day. One couldn’t eat anything but vomited anything he put in his mouth in seconds. Thank god we had a doctor with us on the trip.

The most common phrase we heard while in Tibet was: “Be slow, don’t rush. Walk like an old lady.” Doing vigorous exercise or actions like running, jumping or shouting can increase your seriousness of your disease, and definitely no one wants to risk it.

Lhasa is surrounded by tall rocky mountains. In here, houses are no more than four stories high. The highest building is Potala temple, which is 13 stories high. There is no MacDonald or KFC, and most of the local food is spicy, as many Sichuanese have come to Lhasa and opened restaurants. Sichuan food is spicy, vegetables and meat included. So as time passes, Lhasa people start to become accustomed to eating and cooking spicy food.

We will be leaving Lhasa tomorrow and heading towards the everest base camp. We just learnt that we’re the only group to go into the Everest base camp due to the change of power in the Chinese Central Government and extra tight security at this time. We felt very lucky indeed.